This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true, right? If you've seen conspiracy-theory debunks, the resemblance is rather strong.

▲

Animats 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This paper starts to go downhill around "The easier-than-expected problem of consciousness".

The Meta paper [1] is much more useful. They claim to be reading out what someone is seeing, in a rather approximate way. The sensing is improving. One project was able to sense magnetic fields at 13 points at 1KHZ using a custom helmet fitted with sensors.[2] The technology is still in the early stages, but they got rid of the high vacuum and cyrogenics needed for SQUID sensors. Progress.

This currently has fewer data points than functional MRI, but more bandwith. fMRI, after all, is measuring blood flow. It's like trying to figure out what an IC is doing by watching its infra-red heat emissions. "Look, the FPU is working hard now."

That paper is a few years old. What's been going on since?

[1] https://ai.meta.com/blog/brain-ai-image-decoding-meg-magneto...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6063354/

	▲	IanCal 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is further info because I think it’s interesting rather that any sort of correction but fMRI doesn’t quite measure blood flow - at least not directly. Oxygenated and deoxygenated blood have slightly different magnetic properties. So the fMRI is trying to detect from that how oxygenated the blood is, with the assumption that active areas are using more oxygen which causes a small dip then blood flow increases so then there’s an increase that follows over about 5-6 seconds. I don’t know if more advanced things are used now but when I messed about with it you’d measure the change then apply a 6s linear convolution to the signal to estimate activity. There’s an interesting set of layers of assumptions in all this, and to me the idea that the mri part works at all seems like wild magic.

▲

tgv 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields

It's tentatively proven that humans react to large magnetic fields. The reaction can come from simple interference, without ever being processed as a sense.

But there's so much more bullshit. That an MEG measurement was decoded only means that the brain produces a magnetic field that correlates with the information it is processing. So there's no Faraday cage in our head. Great. But the brain already knows what it is doing. All that information is there, very fast and reliable. Why should it try to decode its much less detailed and very weak magnetic field then? Where are the sensors? MEG needs super-conduction to work, and doesn't work when there's any disturbance. In the institute where I worked, it was forbidden to use carts (for moving equipment or coffee or whatever) on all floors in the corner where the MEG was located when there was an experiment going on, because it would disturb measurements. A few crystals aren't going to overcome those problems.

> The easier-than-expected problem of consciousness

OMFG. There's really no point in reading this.

▲

xattt 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There was a comment years/decades ago on slashdot about someone walking under a malfunctioning ceiling-hung security CRT TV, and feeling like they were hit on the head when they walked under it. The assumption was that the TV had an abnormally large magnetic field (or the person was particularly sensitive).

I’ve tried to replicate it, but my chances have become slim-to-none with CRTs going out of fashion.

	▲	andrewflnr 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The "malfunctioning" part is probably critical to replication.

▲

skeledrew 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It does sound pretty fantastic. What parts in particular to you find invalid, and why?

	▲	andrewflnr 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Mainly there's not remotely enough evidence to justify the claims. I don't even know if the hypothesis is impossible (though it certainly needs to explain why consciousness survives exposure to strong magnetic fields, etc), but the idea of long range, detailed internal communication in the brain by magnetic fields needs much, much more evidence to be taken seriously. And that's putting it gently.